Well... how should we begin? It's been a LONG time since I've done any type of beta impressions post here at GT. I tend to really get into them when I do decide to do it... but my work schedule is borderline masochism as of late, so who knows how this will turn out. At the very least, this first post should be above average.

A very short history in way of background: I have always been a pretty huge HOMM fan. I have them all, I like them all, I am biased toward them all, and would probably buy "HOMM on a Shit-stick" if it was released for under 100 bucks. That being said, I will try to keep this from being a lame HOMM geekfest of an impressions thread, and instead just try to explain what I'm seeing as I play the game. I have never been an overly critical type of game player (with the exception of sports games) - so this will probably be a pretty even-keeled walkthrough. I will assume you guys can go to any website/fansite/youtube link/homepage, etc... and get the basics of the game, so I'll spare you that. Instead, let's just kind of focus on what you see and experience as you start the game. Beginning with my pre-order on Steam, the beta opened up and I downloaded the client directly from Steam, cut & paste my beta code in, and voila' was up and playing in no time.

The opening screen is somewhat similar to Settlers VII - and has all the little bs icons. They're quite ignorable though, so it's not a big deal. How the game is copy-protected, and whether or not you need to be connected to the internet is beyond me. I really don't care, but if you do - I'm sure the info is easy enough to find. I went through most of the options screens, and there are a good number of options for GUI and interface type things, including a difficulty screen shown above.

One of the first screens you will see is the Dynasty Tree sceen. I don't know exactly what it's purpose is yet, but you get to sort of "make" your avatar or hero or something here. You can see all the initial choices you have for making him/her - and it's actually kind of fun, albeit like I said, I have no idea how it fits into the game longterm. Below is a picture of my hero after spending a few minutes going through all the options you see above.

Also of note... it appears you can make multiple heroes this way. And the choices you get in way of customization of these heroes is pretty exhausting when it comes to spending "starting points" on skills and such. There are so many choices available, I could never go through them all. What I've done instead is take a picture of just one subset of choices available to you. What you are looking at below is the Abilities Tab on the detailed section of hero creation. The fist in a circle represents the characters Might skillset. The five icons below that represent 5 subsets of skills that fall under Might. The eight skills underneath that represent just the skills under the left-most icon which represents 'Valor' or somesuch thing. Every single one of the 5 icons has it's own subset of skills. And this is JUST under Might.

The blue vial next to the Might icon is the Magic icon - and it has even more subsets based on the schools of magic. And underneath those schools are more icons. The orange crown icon is Tactics, and it has the smallest amount of choices under it. I took a picture of that below. I also hilighted "Inner Eye" - which appears to be a Sanctuary Faction tactic, so you could get an idea of what the tactics are and how they affect gameplay. As you can see, there are also tabs for Dynasty Traits, Dynasty Weapons, and a place that looks to be where you can write up a backstory for your hero. Again, I don't know what all this is actually for yet, but it's fun to mess with.

At any rate, when you are done doing this, you can click on the little single player icon and begin the tutorial campaign. You get a nice little cutscene (that was choppy and laggy for me at least) - followed by some average voice acting, and a quick little background of what hero you are playing and what your immediate goals are for this particular scenario. Arguably a step above other HOMM games, and perfectly fine from an immersion standpoint, even if not holding a candle to a Bioware title introduction. It's at this point that HOMM VI starts to resemble older HOMM games. Your little hero is on his horse outside your starting point, a path leads south in between really nice terrain graphics including mountains, trees, and a nice sense of varying elevation, and your first Quest is given to you. Yep, HOMM VI has quests, and they are like little mini-goals that you have to accomplish within the over-arching goal of the scenario itself. Now... it's possible this is just a tutorial mechanic to teach you the game, but since they went to the trouble of making a Quest screen (see below), it's probably used throughout the whole game.

One of your tasks will be to kill some wolves, which of course teaches the player the basics of tactical combat. As you progress further in the tutorial mission, you get to fight demons and such (see screen below). I will say this as an initial impression of the tactical combat - I really like it. They have retained the initiative bar from Heroes V, which I really liked, as well as given some of the units some cool/useful/tactical skills. Your hero is able to act one time every turn (similar to HOMM III), either with spell or direct attack. The entire feel of tactical combat is slow and deliberate, and the graphics and movement animations are pretty darn good. I have yet to figure out exactly how camera control works, although at first glance, it doesn't appear to give you quite as much control as HOMM V did. There is of course a good chance I'm missing something. More on that in a later post as I look into it. There is a typical summary screen of the battle before and after. The before shows you what you are up against, and the after shows you how you did. They are basic screens, without any real fanfare. During combat, you can right click on any creature to get it's basic stats. (thought I snapped a pic of that, but guess not). Spell effects and combat animations are also really good imo. The interface is basic, and doesn't feel cluttered, which again is good.

The basic screen of the game includes a little arrow that will bring up an overall kingdom view (pic below). It also serves as an overview for all your different heroes under your control. Again, there's nothing magical about these screens, other than I'm glad they included them, as they have proven to be extremely helpful in older HOMM games.

Soon after fighting the wolves and other nasties, you are given control of your first town. I am not sure how I feel about the town screen and related creature upgrade/purchase screen (shown below). This has always been a point of contention for HOMM fans, as stupid as it may sound. The reason behind that is that town and creature management is a pretty core component of the HOMM series, so a little thing like this can turn into a pretty heated topic on the HOMM forums. As I unlock more things and get futher along in town and creature development, I think I'll make more of a judgement on that subject.

So overall, what do I think so far? I'm cautiously optimistic about it. It's way too early to tell. I can say that I like the graphics, the animations, the tactical combat, and the music so far. That's a start I guess. I'm going to try and play a little each night, and I'll update as I go in case there are still HOMM fans other than me floating around our forums. Feel free to ask questions, but honestly, I probably won't know the answers yet. I think I'll need a few more days with it before I figure out what some of the new screens actually do.

- LD

Logged

LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

I think that town screen looks fine, with the different tiers and such. It's a bit hard to tell from the one unlocked icon, but if it works like I think it does, it's not much different from previous HOMM games.

The problem I had with King's Bounty is that it all felt very stale after having played the HOMM games up to number 5. I had the same problem with Shogun 2: Total War, which was just a rehash of the exact same game mechanics that I had enjoyed immensely when playing the earlier games, but which were getting old and boring in the latest iteration. How "fresh" does HOMM VI feel? Does it feel new, or does it give you a "been there done that" feeling?

Thanks for the impressions, looking forward to more feedback. I've probably put more hours into HOMM III than any other game, but for some reason, HOMM's IV and V fell pretty flat for me. Certainly keeping an eye on VI, but not sure I want to splurge for the whole thing right away.

Thanks for the impressions Lockdown. My wife is a HUGE HOMM fan - it's really the only video game I've ever seen her really love, so I'm thinking of picking this up for her for her birthday. We both really liked HOMM V - while it wasn't my absolute favorite of the series, I thought they did a fairly decent job of updating the game after the HOMM IV debacle.

I don't mind that simple town screen - I'd rather have a clean interface that I can quickly see what I have and make quick decisions than a bunch of ornate 3D flyovers of a town that I will get bored with after seeing it once.

Ok, the process for downloading the beta is an absolute cluster. I preorder the game, and get a link to download the beta guide. With that is a text file that tells me to go to a specific website to download the beta. Except the website it gave me just redirects to the main game website with no way to get to the beta. Lockdown or anyone else who grabbed the beta, tell me I am just missing something here.

So, picking up where we left off… Duke Slava (our hero in the tutorial mission) has now progressed a little further along the map. He has found and taken over a sawmill among other things, which grants our faction +2 wood per day. There is no having to go collect this wood by visiting it or anything. It just bumps your stockpiles [+2 wood] every day that you maintain control of it.

Moving a bit further down the road, our hero runs into the first group of monsters that want to join our cause (see pic). In previous HOMM games, this occurrence was dependent on numerous things; including diplomacy, faction, strength, etc… I’m not sure how it works in HOMM VI yet, as I’m guessing this joining of the Orcs was hard-scripted into the scenario. Anyway, it gives you a picture of who wants to join you, but I don’t think you can right-click here to see their strengths and weaknesses. Kind of a bummer.

Moving a bit further, we come across a chest which gives us the typical HOMM choice of gold-in-pocket or experience points. I chose XP – which led to our Duke's first level-up. Seeing as this a a big deal in HOMM games, we might as well go through the Hero screens now. The very first screen that pops up shows you your Hero's statistics and how the level-up improved them. I was not given a choice on these attribute bonuses by the way. They may be pre-determined by your Hero's class or something.

The second screen here is labeled as the Army Screen, which shows your hero, his gear slots, his currently equipped gear, his backpack, his artifacts, and of course the current army he is travelling with. I believe you can right click on just about anything in this screen to get more details of the items, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Regarding your army, as you can see from highlighting the Orc picture, you are able to see all the statistics for this particular creature stack, as well as their 'Special Attributes', which when you mouse over them will give a description of how they work. We won’t go over them here, but the Orc Maulers have some really cool skills for tactical combat.

The next screen is the Abilities screen, and is quite similar to what I showed you guys on Day 1 – only without the massive amount of points to allocate up front. There is still quite a bit here, so let’s go over some of it really quick…

From top to bottom, you see your hero's name; the fist in the corner indicating he is a Might Hero (I think); the Might / Magic / Tactics icons (of which only Might is unlocked); The sub-categories for the Might set of skills, which include the following: Paragon; Realm; Tactics; Warcries; Warfare. Duke Slava (at least when going from lvl 1 to lvl 2) gets to choose from only the Warcries tree, hence why it is the only one of the five that is unlocked. Below that you see all the Tier 1, 2, and 3 skills under Warcries. He gets 1 point to spend, and they are between the following tier 1 options: 'Stand Your Ground', 'Rush', 'Heroism', and 'Flawless Assault'. Since he started the campaign with 'Stand your Ground', I am going to go with 'Rush', which you can see a description of in the pic below. Let me give my opinion of this method of leveling up your hero: I seriously love it. In a similar way as to Civ 4 & 5, the player is given the chance to decide how his units will grow, HOMM VI takes some of the randomness out of hero progression, and gives it to the player. Now granted, some HOMM games already did this to an extent, but HOMM VI gives even more control to the player, which I personally really like.

Now that we chose that and are back on the adventure screen, the game tells us to open the Duke’s spellbook. His particular book is divided into 3 main sections: Life / Balance / Death. As a quick example, the 'Stand Your Ground' warcry is considered a Life doctrine, while our new skill 'Rush' is considered Balanced. The Duke is again a Might Hero… so I can’t comment yet on how the Magic heroes spellbooks are organized.

Now that we’re done with all that, let’s play a little more before I go to sleep.

So our first week in the tuturial mission is now over, which means it is a new week, which has been dubbed “The Week of Training”. In traditional HOMM fashion, each week brings with it a bonus of some type. This weeks bonus applies to all 1st tier troops, and therefore would allow our town to hyper-produce their first tier troops. I'm pretty sure our sentinels are tier 1. In the town screen, it appears they are tier 1, but I'm unclear as to why it says 'Rank 2' in the picture below, unless that is referring to our town rank. (Probably is). Undetered by such small things, we are going to hire those Sentinels anyway. See the picture below, in which we move the slider up all the way in order to hire all 13 available sentinels. You can also get a sneak peek on this screen of what the Sentinels will eventually be upgradeable to (in this case Praetorians) – as well as looking at what their stats will be. (I didn't snap a pic of that unfortunately)

Next up on our things to do is to continue travelling east – as I saw a goldmine earlier I wanted to envelop into our empire. Along the way, we run into a magical cape that is being guarded by some demon hounds. I think our group is more than strong enough to dispatch them before heading back to our town to pick up those 13 new sentinels. So… it’s time to fight again, and time to see what these Orc Maulers are really made of!

So, without showing you every stage of the battle (this is not an AAR afterall) – we won the fight and galloped off with a new cape. There are a few things I want to show you in terms of the combat screen though, as although they are small, they are cool nonetheless.

First is the initiative bar shown above. Notice a few things that make it helpful. Obviously the first is that you can see the general order in which combat will take place, ie. ‘who goes when’. Of note are the two icons next to the creature whose turn it is. The shield icon is something that is normally open to your creature stack that tells it to not act in an offensive manner, but rather brace itself for a possible attack. This will greatly up its defense for the turn. The second icon is simply a ‘Wait’ command, which will drop the creature lower down in the initiative order. Also of note are the little red and/or green arrows showing next to the creature picture. This shows if the stack has a positive/negative/or both effect on them. You can then click on the creature to see the exact effect on it, be it good or bad. The hourglass in the center of the creature icons simply indicate if they have already taken their action this turn. (In this picture, our crossbowmen have a postive affect on them, a negative effect on them, and have already acted in this current turn).

The above screen is the combat log. This is normally turned off, but can easily be displayed with the click of a button if you want to review something that occurred in the current tactical encounter. Kinda neat, and very easy to read. I love combat logs, so this small feature is a big deal to me.

So, that’s about it for tonight. With our new cape in hand, it’s now off to town to pick up those new troops, and then we're off to capture that goldmine. We were just given another quest as well... something about a horn. So we'll hopefully find that tomorrow as well.

« Last Edit: June 30, 2011, 10:21:18 AM by Lockdown »

Logged

LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

Not a problem. The tutorial mission is probably almost over (I'm guessing) - so there likely isn't a whole lot more to show until I try the skirmish map.

:: HOMM VI – Impressions (Day 3) ::

Picking up where we left off, Duke Slava is off to the goldmine. In doing so, I notice it is guarded, and I wanted to show you what you can see if you right click on the stack to get an idea of what you'll be fighting. It's very much like HOMM V.

At about this same time, a familiar tune came up on my computer… one of my favorite theme songs from Heroes of Might and Magic III in fact! I had heard they took some of the “favorite” songs from previous HOMM’s and incorporated them into HOMM VI – apparently that was not a lie. Awesome.

After a 5 turn combat for the rights to the goldmine, our hero and his army turn south and meet up with more Orc Maulers eager to join us. Soon after that, another treasure chest is found; taking the XP, the Duke reaches level 3. More automatic stat increases along with my ability point choice.

In case you are wondering, it appears a hero can start picking up Tier 2 abilities upon reaching level 5, and Tier 3 abilities at level 15. Due to those restrictions, I decide it’s time to take ‘Flawless Assault’, which is a warcry that grants the stack of my choosing the ability to inflict maximum possible damage for two combat turns… very nice to cast on those Maulers. Travelling a little further south, it looks like that level up couldn’t have come at a better time, as the computer points out to me that an enemy hero and her army await my immenent arrival. They just happen to be guarding another nice piece of equipment. This will probably be your first semi-tough tactical fight of the game.

Interesting enough, on the other side of the mountain from this Warlock Hero, I found a bonus that I thought I would head for before engaging her; but apparently she was onto my tricks, and chased after me when I ended my turn. A brief sparring of words took place, followed by combat. I took a picture of the early stage of this battle to show off what I hope to be signs of good tactical combat A.I. on the part of the computer. In a nutshell, the computer kicked my ass on initiative, and instead of rushing in at me with her melee troops, decided to stand her ground, as she obviously could not reach my troops in her turn. This is by no means a “complex” tactic, but still it is nice to see the computer recognize it as a valid first move when winning initiative and not being able to reach her enemy. Of course, her spellcasters wasted no time attacking my Priestesses, which by the way are excellent Healers. Not a bad first impression of the tactical A.I. (For those not familiar with HOMM, the darker looking grid squares show the movement allowance of the enemy troop I have highlighted, showing me how far they could move in their turn).

Another cool concept in HOMM VI is the concept of 'cover' in tactical combat. I took a pic of it as it relates to this rock, with the tutorial tip on so you could read how it works. And yes you are seeing that correctly – cover CAN be attacked (demolished) – neat.

So, after getting every mine of all types open to me on the map, (this was actually a quest, finding 4 of 4 mines) along with defeating the enemy hero, the Duke reaches level 4, takes the last ability open to him, and gets another quest that is going to be taking me underground into my family crypt. Should be fun as I’ve been looking forward to seeing an underground map.

So my impressions of the game continue to be mostly positive. There are some glitchy graphical things I've noticed, but it seems like the type of stuff you would either see in a beta that is not yet fully optimized, or a potential flickering problem due to crappy ATI drivers. Nonetheless, I haven't seen anything too terrible yet. Combat is pretty slow paced due to the (generally speaking) high health of creatures. I personally like this better than some of the older HOMM games, but that is strictly personal preference, and you may feel differently. The sense of elevation on the maps is cool, and I think creating my own maps with the editor will be loads of fun. I feel like the biggest negative with the graphics so far is the ability to actually see some of the little doodads that you can click on in the adventure screen - some just blend in with the terrain to the point that they are hard to spot. I'm also wondering why you can't change the pitch of the camera. You can zoom and rotate easily, but why they would take away the ability to pitch and hold the camera where you want kind of baffles me - maybe I'm still missing something?

I may do one more impression post before trying out the skirmish map and then reporting on that.

Logged

LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

I cant believe that I never given this series a play, Ive always for some reason taught it as a card game. I am very interested in HOMM6 to the point I downloaded the demo of HOMM5 to give it a try before I buy last night. I just saw that Steam is having a complete pack sale for $4.99 I am downloading it right now. I plan to play V and the accompanying expansions with intentions to complete in time for the release of VI. Thanks for the intro Lockdown.

Note that he is taking a save game and showing you quite a bit of gameplay. He is playing from 'Broken Alliance' - which is the one multiplayer (similar to a skirmish in this instance, as you have a bit of control of AI players or real players taking the other faction slots) map that is included with the beta.

Should answer most of your questions and give you a good look at the game in general.

-LD

Logged

LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."